Twenty Four Weeks - Episode 2 - "Thirteen" (PG)

by James David Denisson

the hell I was talking about. “You might be right.”

  I close her car door and she drives away. For some reason I want to be with her as she does. I want to go home with her and celebrate our growing pregnancy, but I have to go back to my dungeon, I have to think, I have to get better for her and our baby girl.

  Saturday

  The next day I drive upstate to Branford, to the address Grant Upton had given me. The house is at the end of a long gravel driveway boarded by leafy trees on either side. It’s an old place, well looked after like it is something important and worth the effort. The gardens are full of flowers, the lawn looks soft and the hedges are all tight angles and perfect. I worried I’m in the wrong place until a man comes out the front door and stands on the porch. Grant, the man that I had met in Maine, is waiting for me.

  I climb the steps to the front landing and he extends a hand.

  “Right on time,” he says.

  “Are you charging by the hour?”

  He laughs and leads me in. “It’s not quite that sort of arrangement,” he tells me. “There’s no fee. We ask for a donation at the end, sort of a tip if you like. If we bless you, then I hope that will return to us. Understand?”

  “Sure.” But I don’t. I have no idea how much this sort of thing is worth.

  He leads me inside, to a room that contains two large couches, set to face each other. In the centre sits a coffee table and a box of tissues.

  “Something to drink? Tea? Coffee?”

  “Coffee thanks,” I say.

  “Take a seat. I’ll be back in a moment.”

  And he leaves me in the room. It’s quiet except for the deep tick of a clock on a table against the wall. Everything is dark wood and white linen. The books on their shelves are all about marriage and how to make it better and I’m struck by the fact that no matter how you spin it, I’m in the wrong place - or maybe the wrong time. I’m two years too late and I’m alone.

  And I have nothing to fix but myself.

  I hear Grant returning. His shoes thump on the polished wooden floors. I quickly sit down to hide the fact that I’ve been snooping. But for some reason I don’t think he cares, or maybe he even expects it.

  He’s got two coffees on a tray. He puts it in the centre of the table.

  “Watch where you put your mug,” he warns me. “Mary can be quite daunting when there are rings on the table.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind,” I say.

  We sit in silence for a short while, sipping the coffee. It’s instant and I’m not enjoying it, but I’m not rude and drink it all the same.

  “So, Judd...” he begins. “I usually start by talking a little about myself. Most people I see first off haven’t met me. But you have. And no doubt you’ve looked me up.”

  I nod cautiously.

  “And I suppose that everything checked out because you’re here.” He sits back. “I like the idea of stories. I like that life is a narrative. You’ve got a story, Judd, just like everyone else. Have you told anyone your story?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean the story of what happened to you.”

  “Oh. Well, my sister, I suppose.”

  “But the whole story - the no-holds-barred story? Did you tell anyone that story?”

  I shake my head.

  “Well, now’s the time.”

  I look at him carefully. I’ve not told Wendy the whole truth, why would I tell a man I’ve only met three times, a stranger.

  I think one of Grant’s abilities is mind reading.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he says as evidence. “You don’t know me and why should you just spill all your deepest secrets to someone you don’t know. But I am the best person for this. I don’t know you. I won’t judge or blame you. I’ll just listen. And I promise you, everything will be lighter after you unburden yourself. And this is a trust exercise. You need to trust me for this to work.”

  I take a deep breath. Steady myself. I’ve come all this way. I knew that this would be hard. What hope did I have if I stumbled at the very first obstacle, the first test?

  And so I start talking. I start with facts. They’ve never failed me, but maybe they have. There is no feeling in facts. They hold no emotion.

  I tell him about Quinn. I tell him how we met. I talk about how love blossomed out of friendship and how we got married. I talked about our lives, what we did, where we lived. I’m feeling something rise in me now, something I did not expect. I suppose it is remembering the past, when everything was new and the future spread out in front of us like an empty canvas waiting to be filled with color and movement and light. That something is welling out of me now. I’m stumbling on words, on phrases, on pictures. She is beautiful and all the world to me and I want to live and die in her arms. I can’t imagine anyone else that I would ever want to be with. And she blossoms with new life inside her. She grows and radiates joy and I’m falling deeper in love with her with every passing day.

  Then she calls me at work and my world falls apart. Our baby has stopped moving. He’s died inside her. I’m not with her when she hears those words. I’m late. She has to hear them again when I arrive and I don’t think she has even forgiven me for that. She gives birth to our perfect boy- our perfectly formed little boy who is dead. All our dreams died with him, and took our future too.

  I wanted to comfort her. I wanted to take away her pain. I didn’t know how. So I encouraged her to have another. Quinn has the kind of uterus that makes the journey of sperm a difficult undertaking. Our first pregnancy had been something like a miracle, and a second was unlikely. So unlikely that it never happened.

  And so we gave up on our dream of a baby. Quinn moved on, or so it seemed, and we tried as best we could to make another life for ourselves. But below the surface there were cracks, ever widening cracks. We were falling apart and there was nothing we could do. We fought, we cried, we promised and we failed.

  I’m crying now. I’m sobbing like Quinn did when she confronted the enormity of her betrayal and consequences. But this is different. This is grief. This is pain bubbling uncontrolled to the surface. This is anguish in its exquisite glory.

  She wanted something from me that I could not give her. I did not know how. She wanted something deep from within me, some feeling, some emotion that I could not express.

  And then everything changed. She changed. She stopped fighting me. She stopped wanting those things from me. She just was. She was sleeping with my boss behind my back. In my bed. She gave up on us, on me, on our marriage, our vows, our life. She gave up and gave herself to another.

  I’m weeping into my hands. I feel Grant come and sit next to me, wrap his arms around me, hold me as I cry and somehow make words come out of my mouth.

  And then I find them, on her birthday. I’m holding a cake. Maybe I want something more from her. I’m happy as I come home. I love her. But she is in my bed with him and they’re having sex like it’s the best sex she’s ever had and they’ve been doing it for a long time. They have been. They’ve been sleeping together for a year. I didn’t know. I didn’t see the signs. Maybe I did. Maybe I ignored them. Maybe I couldn’t believe that the wonderful, beautiful, caring woman that I married could do this to me. But she did. She was.

  I fled. I left her. I wallowed in self-pity for two long months. Then my father died, just when my life was at its worst. And then along came the pregnancy.

  She almost loses our second child. He’s there. She’s seen what she’s done to me and she’s feeling guilty and she knows that she doesn’t have a future with him. He leaves her and she’s alone. I forgive her and she forgives me. We talk, longer and more honest than we have for years.

  And I love her again.

  I love her again.

  I love her.

  Oh, God. I love her.

  I’m still crying when I’m done talking. I don’t know how long it takes for me to finally come back to normal, whatever that is. The truth is: I’ve never cried like th
at. There was only one time that came close, after I had given myself one nasty jolt from my father’s homespun electrical box. I had a memory of my father, one that was hidden within me, and I cried then in my mother’s arms.

  But this was something different. This was like all the pain, the grief, the loss, of a lifetime held together and hidden was suddenly and tumultuously released like a dam broken or a like tidal wave crashing upon the shore. And this was my problem. I hold everything in. I don’t express, I don’t share. I don’t feel. I turn it all upon myself.

  I shut down.

  “Damn,” I gasp. “Is it always like that?”

  “Sometimes,” Grant tells me. He’s still got an arm around me. “But everyone’s different. Your story is a big, wonderful, frightening thing when it’s spoken like this. And the truly wonderful thing is the unexpected insights that it brings. It’s like the thoughts that you bury inside just come out too. It’s an eye opener.”

  All I can say is damn again. It’s out of place in this house, but I think worse words have been said here, both in anger and surprise.

  “Any insights, Judd?”

  I tell him about how I am, how I hold everything back.

  “I got that impression the moment I met you. What about the last thing you said?”

  I can’t say it. I can’t think it. It’s impossible. It can’t be true.

  He answers for me: “You said that you love her.”

  I take a deep breath. “I can’t,” is all I can say.

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s too late. We’re a lost cause. We’re